Brought to Book (25 page)

‘You had something on him, hadn't you? Something that made him uneasy and nervous when you were around.'

‘He deserved to be,' he said in an undertone.

‘Tell me about it.'

‘It's a long story. Anyway, I don't see—'

There was a tap on the door, and George Myers put his head round it. ‘Mother says would you like to stay for dinner, miss?'

Rona flushed. ‘That's very kind of her, but I wouldn't dream of—'

Surprising her, Gary Myers took hold of her arm. ‘We have to go out, Dad. Tell Ma I'm sorry, I can't stop for dinner. I'll see you later.'

And, brushing past his father in the doorway, he pulled Rona down the hall and out of the front door.

‘Where are we going?' she asked breathlessly.

‘I don't know, but we can't talk there.'

‘My car's over the road—'

He shook his head. ‘We both need to eat. There's a Pizza Place round the corner. That OK?'

She nodded, aware of a feeling of total unreality as they walked quickly down the tree-lined street. How had this inoffensive-seeming man aroused such antipathy – in Keith Bromsgrove, in the men at the pub, in the police?

As they sat facing each other across the small table, she said spontaneously, ‘You're not at all as I imagined.'

His mouth twitched. ‘You were expecting a drug-crazed maniac?'

‘Well – something like that.'

‘I admit I laid it on a bit up there – old clothes, hang-dog expression – though we genuinely were going through a bad patch; I'd been made redundant from the bank and Dad had had to take early retirement. And OK, I
was
using a bit at the time; money was tight, and the odd spot of cannabis helped. Mostly, though, I hoped my disreputable appearance would put the fear of God into Harvey.'

‘Why should you want to do that?'

‘I told you, it's a long story.'

‘I'm in no hurry.'

Gary was silent for a long time, turning his fork over and over on the table. Their pizzas, large as dinner plates, were laid in front of them, shining with oil and tomato and anchovy and black olives, and still he didn't speak. Then, with a sigh, he picked up his fork.

‘At school, I had a best mate called Greg Nelson. He was the nearest thing to a brother I ever had. While I changed my mind weekly about what I wanted to be – airline pilot, explorer, spaceman – all Greg ever wanted was to be a writer. And he was good. He won all the prizes at school, and came first in a kids' poetry competition in the local rag.

‘When we left school, we got jobs in the same bank, but he spent all his evenings and weekends writing. Eventually I got him to send something to a publisher. It wasn't accepted, but he had a letter back saying he had promise, and if he could become a bit more “disciplined”, he might be in with a chance. We weren't sure what that meant, but a few days later I saw an ad in the paper for a writers' correspondence course, so I cut it out, and the next time I saw him, at a jazz concert, I showed it to him.'

His face clouded and he stopped eating. Rona felt a prickling in her palms, and her heart set up a slow, heavy thumping.

‘Did he apply for it?' she prompted urgently.

Gary continued as though she hadn't spoken. ‘But that same night, his life fell apart. A fire broke out at his home and they were all trapped in it – his parents and his young brother and sister. He should have been there himself – that was what bugged him, that he'd escaped – but after the concert he slept over at our place.'

He looked up at her, his eyes dark with pain. ‘It destroyed him. He lost everything: his family, his home, and all his possessions – absolutely everything he had. He was quite literally destitute. He'd no other relatives, and my folks took him in. It was a bad time all round. He went rapidly downhill, drinking, taking drugs, and we just couldn't pull him out of it. Counselling had been arranged for him, but he never showed up, and steadily refused all offers of help. Like he was trying to punish himself for not dying with his family.'

‘What happened next?' Rona asked to break the silence.

Gary sighed and returned to his pizza. ‘A miracle, I suppose you might say. Ma was taking his jacket to the cleaner's – the one he'd worn the night of the concert – and when emptying the pockets, she found the ad for the course. It seemed a godsend, a means of giving him a sense of purpose again. He took a lot of persuading; but then his old love of writing came to the surface, and he began to regard it as a challenge. So he signed on, and was allotted a personal tutor.'

‘Ben Abbott,' Rona whispered. It had to be.

Gary's head snapped up. ‘You know about that?'

‘A bit. Go on.'

‘Well, he became obsessed with it, and with writing generally – talked of nothing else. The stuff he wrote, though, made pretty hairy reading; all about psychopaths and serial killers and mutilation. Lord knows what the tutor made of it. Still, I reckoned as long as it was helping him, that was all that mattered. He was still at our place, and his light used to stay on late into the night. I remember Dad saying thank God for computers; the clatter of a typewriter at all hours would have driven him mad. It did strike me they must be working him pretty hard, but I never dreamed he was writing a book at the same time. I didn't cotton on to
that
till he'd finished the second one.'

Rona pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. ‘He showed them to you?'

‘He probably wouldn't have, but one day when I went to his room they were on the table, and he let me read them. They just about blew my mind – strong, powerful stuff, still dark and disturbing, but – well, I'm no literary expert, but I thought they were brilliant. I said he should send them to Mr Abbott, but he'd finished his course by then and didn't think he'd be interested. Anyway, eventually he did send them in, with a covering note.'

Another silence, and Rona saw to her consternation that his eyes had filled with tears. ‘Then fate dealt him another of its crappy blows,' he said savagely. ‘He was knocked down in the fog, and died in hospital.'

‘Oh no!' Rona exclaimed involuntarily.

‘Yes. Well, we all went through hell for a while, and it was months before I remembered the manuscripts and realized there'd been no reply from his tutor. So I wrote to the school, first to tell them of Greg's death, and then to ask if they had his books. But they didn't know anything about them, and Mr Abbott had left some time before. They'd no forwarding address, either, as all their correspondence with him had been via the box number where Greg sent his stuff, here in Stokely. So I wrote to him there, but the letter came back saying the facility had been closed.'

Tense and scarcely breathing, Rona waited for him to continue, her mind racing.

‘So I dropped it. Told myself his writing had helped him, which had been the object of the exercise, and now he was gone, the books didn't matter anyway.'

‘Until?'

‘Yeah,' Gary said heavily. ‘“Until.” I'd heard all the hoo-ha about Harvey's fantastic books – you could hardly miss it – but it had all washed over me until I came across an old Sunday supplement at the dentist, with an extract from
The Raptor
in it. And when I glanced at it – well, it shook me rigid, didn't it, because I'd read it before, almost word for word. I couldn't believe it – thought it was precognition or something. He'd changed the title, which is why I'd not cottoned on sooner; Greg called it
The Condor Conspiracy,
but it was the same book, all right. I got it out of the library together with the earlier one, and they were pretty much exactly as he'd written them. God, how I wished I still had the manuscripts! So I set out to find this guy and ask him what the hell he was playing at, and how a famous author like him had got hold of Greg's books. The paper said something about his “hideaway” near Spindlebury where he did his writing, so it was easy to track him down. I collared him at the pub one night. He just – came apart. Made no attempt to deny it. Well, he couldn't; I'd caught him on the hop.'

Rona said unsteadily, ‘Let's get this straight: you're saying categorically that Theo Harvey didn't write
The Raptor
?'

‘That's what I'm saying,' Gary answered harshly. ‘Nor
Dark Moon Rising
.'

‘And you say he admitted it?'

‘He'd no choice.'

‘Did he offer any explanation?'

‘Oh, he tried to get round me with a sob story. Said he'd had a tragedy in his life a year or two back and hadn't been able to write since, and it was killing him. He'd been working for the writing school under a pseudonym, for obvious reasons, but he resigned from it at the time of the “tragedy”, and it was yonks later that he came across the parcel of Greg's books, which he'd not even opened. He was going to throw them out, but he flicked through them and got hooked. Give him his due, he phoned the school, only to be told that Greg was dead and had no living relatives, so he reckoned he was hurting no one by pinching them – to tide him over, he said, until “the muse” came back.'

‘So you blackmailed him,' Rona said flatly. It was not a question.

Gary flushed. ‘Do you think I'd have used my own name up there if I was going to do that? The money was his idea. I told him I was going to make it public, and quick as a flash he offered me cash to keep quiet. As I said, money was tight at the time, but even so I was never comfortable with it – it felt like I was selling Greg down the river. I made it clear it was only a holding measure, to give him time to decide how to handle it, and I was cagey about accepting too much – it'd look odd if I was suddenly flush. In all, it was only a few thousand. God knows he could afford it.'

‘It didn't show up on his bank statements.'

Gary smiled wryly. ‘It wouldn't; it was from an account in the name of Ben Abbott, at a different bank. They weren't obliged to produce it unless the police asked for it – which they didn't, not knowing anything about it – but it was all perfectly legal.'

Rona digested that. ‘So what were you arguing about the night he died, and why were you in the village?'

‘Well, it had been going on for six months, which I reckoned was quite long enough, and I'd decided to tell him that after this payment, I'd set the record straight. But when I got to the pub he wasn't there, and I had to go up to the cottage looking for him. It turned out he hadn't got the money because he'd mixed his dates and thought it was the next week I was coming. So we drove to the nearest cash point, and on the way I told him his time was up. He went into a blind panic and we argued all the way, him insisting it wouldn't help Greg or anyone else to come out with it, and that he'd happily go on paying.

‘When we got there, he took out the five hundred as usual and handed it over. He was expecting a lift back, but I couldn't face more arguing so I told him to phone for a taxi and went in to the White Horse. I usually stayed there overnight, but it was only about nine thirty and quite frankly I'd had enough of the place, so I decided to drive straight home. Just as well I did, in the circumstances.'

He looked up and met her eyes. ‘And honest to God, that was the last I saw of him. When I came out with my bag five minutes later, he'd gone. Either the taxi came pretty damn quickly, or someone must have given him a lift.'

‘You told the police this?'

‘Of course I did.'

Someone must have given him a lift.
And ten to one, that someone was his killer. The hypothetical stranger Stacey had seen him with some half an hour later?

Gary ran a hand through his hair. ‘It knocked me for six, I can tell you, hearing he was dead. Couldn't sleep for weeks. I kept wondering if he'd still be alive if I'd run him back like he wanted, or whether he topped himself because I said I was going public. I was expecting the police any minute. In the end, I decided it would be better if I admitted being with him – someone might have seen us together, and there was no record of him giving me money, nothing they could pin on me. They gave me a hard time, but they had to let me go.'

Rona said tentatively,
‘Might
it have tipped him over the edge, knowing it would come out?'

Gary shook his head. ‘Not as quickly as that; he was still hoping to change my mind.'

‘You never did “go public”, though, did you?'

His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘It would have brought me back into the spotlight, wouldn't it, really given the police something to get their teeth into. So after all my moralizing, in the end I opted for saving my own skin rather than giving Greg the credit due to him.'

He picked up his glass of Coke and drank it in one draught. Rona allowed him a moment to compose himself, then steeled herself for her next question.

‘Gary, did you ring my doorbell in the middle of the night, or tuck a note into my dog's collar, or – or poison him?'

He looked at her blankly. ‘
What
?'

‘Did you?'

‘Of course I bloody didn't – what do you take me for? I don't know where you live, for a start, and I didn't even know you
had
a dog.' He flushed suddenly. ‘All the same . . .'

‘What?'

‘There is one thing more I'd like to get off my chest. I – broke into Harvey's house and stole the notes he'd made for his new book.'

She stared at him. ‘During his funeral?'

His flush deepened. ‘Yeah. Pretty sneaky, wasn't it?'

‘But – why?'

‘Well, he'd come to the end of his freebies, hadn't he, and he told me the next book would be based on his own life. I wanted to make sure I didn't figure in it.' He paused. ‘I took some other stuff, too, to make it look kosher. I burned the notes but I still have the jewellery. Would you – give it back to his wife for me?'